Dave on Demand: Next!
With all the cast-shuffling, they should call it "Project Law & Order": One day they're in, the next they're out.
You know
Law & Order
's trademark "ch-ching" sound effect? Sometimes I think it's a network alert to notify viewers of yet another cast change. The long-running drama has had more turnover than the Dallas Cowboys' coaching staff.
The latest man overboard is Jesse L. Martin, who got a solid send-off this week after his character, Detective Ed Green, found himself on the wrong side of the law because his gambling problem had emerged once more.
You could get dizzy trying to follow all the actors who have gone through the revolving door as one of the show's homicide investigators. A partial list: Christopher Noth, George Dzundza, Paul Sorvino, Jerry Orbach, Benjamin Bratt and Dennis Farina.
Law & Order is so adept at transitions that in the same episode in which they jettisoned Martin, they introduced his replacement, Anthony Anderson. It's the Pony Express of television shows.
At one point in his swan song, Martin's superior officer (S. Epatha Merkerson) asked him when he fell off the wagon. "The gambling," he said, "I got back into it after Lennie [Orbach] died." She responded, "Partners aren't forever."
Certainly not on this show.
What a coup. The networks have done a remarkable job of lowering our expectations. Case in point: all the buzz this week about ABC's broadcasting on Thursday of back-to-back-to-back fresh episodes of Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy and Lost.
Or, as we used to call it, a night of regularly scheduled programming.
Our huckleberry friend. Speaking of hype, Gossip Girl returned from hiatus this week, opening with a rain-soaked homage to Breakfast at Tiffany's with Blair as Audrey Hepburn and Nate as George Peppard.
It was a lovely but baffling scene. Do you suppose the adolescents who watch Gossip Girl got the reference to the 1961 classic? Somehow, I have trouble believing that CW viewers are closet fans of TCM.
My fellow Americans . . . What a week for politicians in prime time. President Bush showed up on Monday's Deal or No Deal and (on tape with the first lady) on Wednesday's American Idol. On NBC, he explained that he was tickled pink to be associated with anything that had decent approval ratings.
Then all three presidential candidates made taped appeals to the viewers of WWE Raw, USA's professional wrestling show. Sample pitch: "Can you smell what Barack is cooking?"
These are strange times we're living in, folks.
What fight? Half the fun of HBO's boxing match between Philadelphia legend Bernard Hopkins and Welsh hero Joe Calzaghe was watching the ringside crowd in Las Vegas.
There was Sylvester Stallone, who was constantly jumping up to gesticulate and yell at the ref; Catherine Zeta-Jones (another Welsh icon), and Jay-Z.
When the heads would part, you could also catch an occasional glance of the more diminutive celebrities in attendance: Jeremy Piven, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis, for instance.
The strangest face in the crowd belonged to Simon Cowell. He spent the entire night looking around the auditorium, everywhere but at the ring. Why was he there if not for the main event?
Punctual to a fault. No doubt you've seen that commercial for the Visa check card where a couple risk life and limb to get inside the theater at the cineplex precisely at 9 for the film's scheduled starting time.
Why, so they can sit through 15 minutes of commercials and coming attractions?